Chasing Pavements
by Raaiku
Summary: I was deluded and their was something about him that I didn't understand. An aggressiveness, loathing, bitterness. He came to me for help, I didn't know that. I didn't know anything besides that I loved him unendurably.


I was beyond bored and decided I really couldn't wait to get to this point of my fanfiction. If you haven't read the rest of my Darren Shan series then you really won't know whats going on soooo I suggest you get on that haha

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><p>Twilight had edged itself upon the city, cast its shadow upon the streets, hushing the noise of people that filled the air during the day. A strong, warm sense of peace flooded the slumberous atmosphere. The area was largely deserted, and nobody walked past the young woman making her way down the sidewalk. A long, black button down jacket covered her body, her hands in the pockets as she hastily paced down the side of the roads, appearing to be in a hurry but in reality – had nowhere to go, at all.<p>

It suddenly dawned on her that she was unfamiliar with the part of town she was in and that the street numbers got smaller and the buildings got older, lanes narrowed and the traffic thinned into nothing. Still, she rushed on, head down, a curtain of long blonde hair covering her face as she winded down narrow alley ways.

A walk through the city at night, in peace and solitude, was failing to fill the void. Self loathing and loneliness ate away at her, from the inside out, she was tired but couldn't bring herself to stop pacing through the empty city. She entered the shadow of an alley; crossing the bridges of sorrow, chasing something, raising a grave to the reasons behind her. Night was falling, the path was receding, she felt empty with yearning. A fly who dreamt of the spider, lusted for the silk tangled within, but the path to the web became longer and wider.

_What are you chasing? _She thought to herself. _Pavement. You're chasing pavements._

A sudden blow to the back of her head was painful enough to shatter her deep train of thought, and she went tumbling into the concrete. Ignoring her wound, she rolled defensively and tried to jump up to meet her assailant, but something silver came crashing down where she had lay a moment before, throwing sparks. In a moment of ignorance, caught off guard, she threw her arms in front of her face to shield herself. At that, her attacker chuckled, a laugh of pure insanity and evil. For a moment she swore it was Murlough, back from the beyond to extract his vengeance on her, and her heart raced at the very idea. But that was ridiculous.

"I'll cut you to pieces!" He boasted, circling her, and she sensed a strong familiarity in his voice, but too panicked to place her finger on it. The figure was large, his face masked, and hooks instead of hands. He struck, but she dodged his quick hands and the metal dug into the wall behind her, a chunk of the building coming out with it when he drew his weapon free with speed. Too much speed. He was a vampaneeze, she could tell, from his inhuman speed and blood red eyes. Fortunately the stone of blood hanging by a chain was safely tucked away, hidden in her coat.

But he was just toying with her, biding his time before he killed her, as she was in a bad position to fight back. She brought her knee to her chest and kicked with enough force to knock him down, but he had been expecting it and threw his arm down into her shin.

A short scream rang out as she felt immense pain shoot threw her leg, ruining any chance she had of running away. Rolling to her back, she watched the vampaneeze slowly approach her, slicing the hooks together, making a terrible noise that once again brought Murlough to mind and her head filled with hysteria.

There was a sharp clicking noise, followed by the hiss of parted air. Something shot by the vampaneze's head, only narrowly missing. It struck the wall and embedded itself - a short, thick, steel-tipped arrow. The vampaneze cursed and crouched, hiding in the shadows of the alley.

She could no longer tell what was going on, nor see anyone, and had nothing to go by but the sounds of the vampaneze's angry breath and her gasping sobs. There was no sight or sound of the person who'd fired the arrow. Shuffling backwards, the vampaneze locked gazes with her. "I'll get you later," he vowed through gritted teeth. "I'm going to make sure you die slowly and painfully Ariel." Then he turned and sprinted. A second arrow was fired after him, but he ducked low and again it missed, burying itself in a large bag of rubbish. The vampaneze bulted out of the end of the alley and was quickly enveloped into the night.

Ariel sat up and gingerly ran her fingers through her hair, touching her scalp to feel the large knot in the back of her head, and winced at that.

Footsteps filled the silence until a man was standing in front of her, holding a gun shaped weapon with an arrow jutting out of it. She nervously casted her eyes up for a moment, studying him through her lashes, realizing it wasn't Darren or anyone she knew. The man was tall, dressed in all black as well, with gloves on his hand and a bandana covering the lower half of his face, and jet black hair.

"Thank you," She said quietly, uneased by his grave facial expression and the frightening vibe he gave off.

He didn't answer, just walked to the end of the alleyway, searching for any trace of vampaneze, his gun aimed and ready. After a moment, the man began to walk back. Ariel was looking down at her coat, brushing off dust, and when she looked back up his gun was pointed at her.

"You wanna lower that, buddy?" She didn't intend to sound so sarcastic, but a vampaneze hopping out of nowhere, bashing her to the ground had left her frustrated, at the least, for a lack of better word. She didn't need some idiot pointing a gun in her face.

At that, he lowered the gun, but took another step forward, knelt down and roughly grabbed her face, his thumb pressed against the pulse of his throat. There was nothing kind about his expression, and her irritation slowly sunk back into fear.

"Do you know why I saved you?" He asked, after a moment that felt like forever, and much like the vampaneze, his voice brought déjà vu_._

"I don't know...But by the looks of it I'm assuming you're not my knight in shining armor,"

_ "Maybe I was saving you for ___myself,___" _He hissed.

And suddenly, for no reason at, his words brought back a distance memory of advice someone had given her as a child. She couldn't recall who had given it to her, but it was when she was dating her first love. After a fight that they had gotten into, he broke all the light bulbs in his house with the heel of her shoe. __When a man tells you he's going to hurt you, believe it. __They told her. _They always warn you and they're always right. _However, she was sort thrilled by it, therefore didn't bother to listen to the advice then and wasn't going to now.

A weak, shuddering gasp escaped her lips. It was very possible that she could fight him off, break his hand, anything, but the heat of his touch rendered her frozen. Angry at her own terror but hopeless against it, she remained motionless. Seconds felt like hours, but he let go of her face and stood up, taking a step back and extending his hand toward hers.

Her eyes shifted from his face to his hand, her head swam with confusion, pain still throbbing in her leg.

"Had you going for a minute, didn't I?" She couldn't see the smile behind the bandana, but his voice suddenly became kind.

"You're not trying to kill me..?" Ariel inquired in a puzzled tone, as if it were a simple, common question.

"Hardly!" He took her hand and hauled her to her feet.

"Mind telling me who you are now?" She asked again, allowing him to help her up.

"There's plenty of time for that later. Are you able to walk?"

"Yeah... I'm fine, see?" She took a big step and began to sway forward, throbbing pain causing her leg to give out.

With agility he quickly stepped through the space between them, catching her before she hit the ground. Feeling his arms wrap around her caused her face to go hot, and she hoped he wouldn't notice in the dark.

"Yeah, you're perfectly fine alright,"

Ariel shot him a glare.

"Just a joke, Princess Badass of Badassia,"

She couldn't help the loud laughter and the smile that spread across her face, if only he knew the irony to that comment.

"Then lean on me. I don't want to stick around. Hooky might come back with his friends." He helped her to her feet and placed her arm around his shoulder.

"Hooky? Oh, you mean the vampa-"

"The vampaneze," he finished, nodding soberly.

"You know about them?"

"Obviously."

"So that one with the hooks is the one who's been killing people?"

"Yes, but he isn't alone. We'll discuss it later after you've been cleaned up."

"Thanks for all the information," She mumbled sarcastically as he led her back the way she had came. The idea of allowing a complete stranger to lead her where ever it was they were going was insane, but it beat lying in an alley with a bum leg and not having a clue where she was. Plus something about him fascinated her, so she allowed him to lead her, and was glad with her decision, instead of afraid, no matter how ruinous. It was the same pleasurable feeling as tearing a piece of paper into tiny, tiny pieces.

There was an elderly man rolling his own cigarettes on the steps of an apartment building, a filthy bag filled with other bags sat beside him. His arms were as thin as sticks and his face was as wrinkled as a raisin, but he nodded and said hello to Ariel very politely. Her friend gave him a couple of cigarettes and a crumpled wad of bills, and the old man reached into the bag, taking out a bottle of cherry brandy and handing it to him.

Entering the building, he took her to the fifth floor of the run-down apartment block.

"What was wrong with him?" She inquired. "Why's he so skinny?"

"Nothing, just cracked out."

Many of the doors they passed along the landing were boarded-over or broken down. "Nice place you got here," She joked.

"It's a condemned building," he said. "I prefer places like this to boarding houses and hotels. The space and quiet suit my purposes."

He stopped at a battered brown door kept shut by an extra thick padlock and chain. Rooting through his pockets, he found a key, unlocked the padlock, removed the chain and pushed the door open.

Mattresses were piled on the concrete shelf, heaped with blankets, throw pillows, and couch cushions - most of them in some variation of mustard yellow. Candle stubs flickered dimly, some jammed in the sharp mouths of beer cans, others in tall glass jars decorated with the Virgin Mary's face on the label.

"No electricity," he said. "The lower apartments are still connected, but it went off up here last week."

He helped her into the cluttered room and laid her down on a couch that had seen better days - it was threadbare, and wiry springs stuck out through several holes, then fetched a first-aid kit from behind the concrete shelf.

Ariel took her jacket off, and was wearing a metal breast plate, a loin cloth, metal around her arms, and boots that went up to her knees.

He glanced over at her, laughed, and in the flicker of candlelight could see his eyes cast down at her outfit.

"What?"

"You would suck in a battle against homosexual men,"

"Shut up," She squinted her eyes at him before looking down to unlace her boots. "My middle is the easiest to protect, and the lack of metal there improves mobility and flexibility as well, not to mention reduced weight...and sexual preference doesn't matter in a war zone asshole,"

Laughing, he knelt down to pull her boot off, the material already soaked with blood, revealing the deep gash and swabbed at it with cotton wool. When it was clean, he studied it momentarily, then left and came back with a reel of catgut and a needle. "This'll hurt," he said.

"I'll live," She assured, grabbing for the bottle of brandy, to take a swig and felt the alcohol burn all the way down her throat.

Once he was done tending to her leg, they passed the brandy back and forth until Ariel's tongue felt numb and her teeth tingled and her head swam. All the questions that had been pressing in her mind earlier were long forgotten.

"It's funny," Her voice sounded slightly slurred. "I haven't drank this in years. I always used to with an old love of mine...He was a boy, just a boy, when I was a very young girl. I still have love letters saved from him, yellowing from antiquity, all from one boy... I hurt him the way these vampeze would like to hurt me." Now that she started, she couldn't stop, as if the words had been oppressed for years and finally in her drunken state of mind had to spill out.

Her friend was sitting on the floor, and although he had taken the bandana off of his face he sat out of the candlelight so that only the glow made his shadow, huge and terrible, jump onto the wall behind him. He said nothing, just sat and listened intently, seemingly strangely subdued.

Ariel stared into the small flicker of fire in a candle, finding herself distracted by it. "When I met him it was like realizing I lived in the dark my entire life." Drunken words poured past her lips like they were living things, like they were spiders and worms and beetles eager to get out of her mouth. "And all at once, and much too completely, someone turned on a blinding light. That's how it struck me. But I was deluded and their was something about him that I didn't understand. An aggressiveness, loathing, bitterness. He had such a hate for the entire world, he came to me for help. I didn't know that, all I knew was that I was failing him, he was in the quicksands and clutching for me, but instead of pulling him out I was slipping in with him."

Her voice was slow, slurred, but her gaze, even from drowsy eyes, was severe, and never shifted from the candle.

"I didn't know anything besides that I loved him unendurably."

"What happened then?" He whispered, looking at her strangely.

"Most people would be content for the story to end there. What happened was that I betrayed him and the only shred of love in his life turned to the rest of his hate... It doesn't seem right that one could so easily become the other... And then the searchlight which had been turned on the world was turned off again and never for one moment since has there been any light stronger than this flicker of candlelight."


End file.
